For over two centuries working people across the world have built
trade unions. This site documents the songs and poems that they made
in the process, union songs. It includes songs and poems that are being
written today, as the process of union building continues all around
the world.

Such songs are the work of famous poets as well as men and women whose names
have been forgotten. They stretch back to ancient times and are being created
today.

"People all over the world, and particularly ordinary working people in factories, mines, fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention … Their strivings, their struggles, their methods have few chroniclers." (CLR James in Facing Reality)

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

"In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing -- About the dark times." Bertolt Brecht

Whatever name we find for these songs they have in common a fierce
opposition to the rule of the entrenched powermongers, who as they
get richer and as humanity's problems grow more accute, get more determined to hang on to power by any means and at all costs.